• Award ceremony and launch of publication on 6 September

UniCredit and the EBRD will announce the winners of its “Born in ’89” essay competition at a discussion event and award ceremony on 6 September 2010, 1800hrs, at the EBRD’s Headquarters (One Exchange Square, London, EC2A 2JN; http://www.ebrd.com/about/contacts/map.htm) in the presence of the six successful contestants from Eastern Europe.

UniCredit together with the EBRD and the Financial Times, launched the competition last year as the world was commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. The aim was to discover how the young generation in the CEE region had witnessed and coped with the political and social changes of the past 20 years and to directly hear their hopes and expectations as well as their concerns for the future.

To celebrate the achievements of the young writers from Eastern Europe UniCredit and the EBRD will also launch a special publication with the 24 best essays which have been selected by an international jury chaired by acclaimed Ukrainian novelist Andrei Kurkov.

Included in the publication are the essays of the six winners of the competition who will be announced on 6 September during a panel discussion with Mr Kurkov and representatives of project partners. First prize is a week’s internship at the Financial Times’ editorial headquarters in London. Further prizes are awarded by UniCredit.

There was strong interest in the competition and some 600 essays from throughout the CEE region were submitted. The contributions reveal the aspirations and fears of a whole new generation that was born after the fall of the Iron Curtain two decades ago. The quality of much of the prose was extraordinary, full of insight and thoughtful observation.

About UniCredit Group

UniCredit Group is a major international financial institution with strong roots in 22 European countries as well as representative offices in 27 other markets, approximately 9,800 branches and more than 165,000 employees at 31 December 2009.

UniCredit Group is market leader in Central and Eastern Europe, where it is one of the largest players in the banking market, with an extensive network of approximately 4,000 branches.

The Group operates in the following CEE countries: Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine.

About EBRD

The EBRD, owned by 61 countries and two intergovernmental institutions, is supporting the development of market economies and democracies in countries from central Europe to central Asia. www.ebrd.com